Prayers for Nikolina

We knew the day would come that Nikolina would need to return to Stanford for some serious neurosurgery. It is here, and we are asking for your prayers.

Donnie and I have enjoyed the past several weeks, being able to visit our son, Shane, and his family and play with both our grandchildren, Nathaniel and Nikolina. Nathaniel is a great big brother, not jealous, just loves his sister, and understands some of what is happening because he himself had a serious kidney problem when he was born (now just a bad memory).

We have some better pictures of Nikolina now, and I have managed to add her history to my family site, The Clan of Mahlou. Pictures and short bios of both the grandkids can be found there.

Nikolina's surgery is scheduled for Wednesday. She has a lipomeningeomylocele that has to be repaired. The most unnerving part is that nerves run through the area that has to be cut open. Right now, it looks like Nikolina, unlike her aunt who also has spina bifida, will be able to walk. She moves her legs and feet in all the right ways. However, any nerves that get in the way of the laser may result in some form of paraplegia. Please pray for steady hands and strong eyes of the neurosurgical team. I know that God is watching over Nikolina or she would not have made it this far, but I think it never hurts to let God know that we care, too.

Monday Morning Meditation #4: Awareness of God's Presence

I continue along the path I started a month ago, reading through Genesis sequentially and stopping when something strikes me as needing greater attention. This week I got as far as the 28th chapter of Genesis. (Yep, it's going to take years at this rate to make it all the way through the Bible, but then, I'm in no hurry. The journey is more important than the destination, as I blogged in an earlier post.)

Reading: Genesis 28:16

Meditation: As I meandered through Genesis, a few things blipped on my radar screen momentarily: where we get government taxes (Joseph required all to give back 1/5 of the produce to the Pharaoh), where we get tithing (Jacob/Israel promised God 1/10 of all he owned and acquired), how often angels appeared to people in those days (probably today, too, a topic of some interest to me, considering that I just made a series of posts about angels), and how often barren women, especially quite old ones, were blessed with children.

What truly jumped out at me, though, was verse 16 in chapter 28: "And Jacob awakened out of his sleep, and he said: 'Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.'" I wonder how many times God is in a place where we are and we know it not. Because we are too busy tending to matters at hand, whatever they may be. Because we are too focused on ourselves. Because we are tired. Because we are not alone. Because we just don't think that way. And then I recall how Doah, in visiting the old mission town where I live for the first time, said to me quite simply in his limited, mentally-challenged language, "God here," and nodded his head in great satisfaction. He knew. In his great limitation of mental faculty, he knew. In his naivete, he knew. He knew what people of much greater intellectual prowess do not know. It causes one to stop and wonder, doesn't it?

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God for enlightenment to know when I am in His presence, to express my regret for any opportunities to be with Him that I missed, to give thanks for His willingness to be with me (with us all), to offer praise to a God who cares enough about us to be present to us, and to tell Him how I revel in His presence now that the shock I felt the first time I knew He was present with me has turned to joy. (I know God knows all of that since He knows me better than I know myself, but I still like to tell Him -- the telling may be more for me than for Him, but I suspect that He does not mind.)

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation with this wonderful God who came after me, brought me into His flock, and has never abandoned me.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Genesis 28:16.

Have a good day and a good week!

Destiny!??

Just one more angel story from Sufi (Islamic) wisdom, please. I just cannot help myself. I love these stories.

This story is called "Escaping the Design."

A man who lived in Baghdad once saw the angel of death in the market. It was obvious that the angel of death was staring at him.

"He must have come to take me," the man said to himself. "I must escape!"

And so the man went quickly to the governor's house who was his friend. "You must help me. The angel of death is here in Baghdad. He has come to take me."

The governor said, "How would you like me to help you my friend?"

"Send me, send me away on your fastest horse to Damascus."

And so the governor ordered that the fastest horse in Baghdad was to be given to his friend. In only three days, a record speed, the man arrived in Damascus! No sooner had he arrived, however, than he saw the angel of death near the eastern gate.

"You actually are here," the angel said.

"What could you possibly mean?"

"Well, I was very surprised to see you in a market in Baghdad because I knew that I was supposed to take your soul three days later in Damascus. How you managed to get here this fast is beyond my comprehension!"




Many thanks to the bilingual author, Dr. Omar Imady, who translated them from the original Arabic and published them in a wonderful little book, Metaphors of Islamic Humanism, so an English speaking world can read them.


EM: The man tried to escape his destiny but could not. Predestination is a view held by Sufis and some others. What, if anything, do you think is pre-destined? I had to look up Catholic dogma on that question (obviously, I am still new to Catholicism). I was happy to see that it did not depart from my own understanding.

The Angel in the Desert

As promised yesterday, here is the Islamic angel story. It was published in a book, called Metaphors of Islamic Humanism (subtitle) by Dr. Omar Imady and is re-printed here with permission.

The title of the story is "The Angel's Instructions."

There once was a man who was traveling through the desert. The journey took longer than he expected and soon all his provisions were gone except for a small jug of water and a loaf of bread. An angel carrying water and food was sent with this command: "When he drinks the rest of his water and eats his last loaf of bread, give him the water and food."

And so the angel observed the man from a distance, waiting for him to drink his water and eat his loaf of bread. But the man was so afraid of finishing his supplies and being left with nothing that he simply couldn't get himself to do so. Whenever he was about to drink or eat, he would say to himself, "But what will happen to me if I were to finish my water or eat my last loaf of bread? I must hold on to them, they are all I have left."

And so he would continue to walk and the angel would continue to observe from a distance.

Sometime before sunset, the man collapsed on the sand. In one hand, he held that very last loaf of bread, and in the other, that small jug of water. The angel, still carrying the food and water, kept on observing until it was clear that the man had died.

"How strange are the children of Adam," the angel said as it ascended to the sky.


EM note: It all boils down to trust, doesn't it?

Lizzie's Angel Story

The lives of my children and me have been filled with blessings (e.g., my miraculous healings and the miracles experienced by Shura and a benefactor). We have also been been helped by real-life angels, i.e. God's kind and talented professionals, as in the case with Noelle and Doah, whose bios can be found here.

Most puzzling and heart-warming was the rescue of my oldest daughter by what appears to be a bona fide angel. Lizzie at the time was living, working, and attending school in San Diego. Coming home late one night after babysitting, she was hit by a drunk driver. The small truck she was driving was totaled. The drunk driver, who did not stop to help, had pushed her into a concrete retaining wall near a place where the highway was being repaired, and that had caused the truck to roll, coming to rest on the passenger door. Lizzie could not get the driver's door open, so she tried to escape via the window between the cab and the truck bed. As she started to squeeze through, she heard a male voice telling her to stop and let him help her. A brawny man, whom she assumed to be one of the road workers, kicked in the window, helped her out of the truck, and carried her across the highway, pointing out that her truck was right in the middle of Highway 5 and she could easily have been hit by approaching traffic because drivers would have had trouble seeing her in the dark. He stayed with her at the construction side until the ambulance that he said had been called showed up, helped her onto the ambulance, then left. She was taken to a nearby hospital, where doctors examined her and found her in perfect shape and the police showed up to take a statement. When she told them about the kind construction worker who had helped her onto the ambulance, the police interrupted her. "Ma'am," one of them said, "the ambulance attendants told us that they found you wandering dazed by yourself at the construction site." (The ambulance had been called by a passing truck driver.) Confused as to what could possibly have happened, Lizzie called Caltrans. No, they had no one working that site on that night, but they put the story on the front page of the Caltrans newspaper, asking for the unknown hero to step forward. No one did. Lizzie, being a psychologist, then determined that perhaps she had dreamt up the incident and had simply exited the truck on her own. She went to the place where the truck had been towed. It was so demolished that it would have been difficult for her to get out -- and the window was broken where someone had kicked it open! Perhaps she kicked in the window on her own and did not know it. However, there were no scratches on her body, and the angle was difficult (directly over her head because the truck had been on its side). So, no evidence of any sort. No clear answer. And there ends Lizzie's story.

I have room only for a summary here, but I wrote about Lizzie's angel in detail in two places. The first was published in a book by L. A. Justice in a fairly straightforward story called "Angel on the Highway." Later, I wrote a more artistic version of the experience in a story called "The Merging," which was published in a collection of short stories from the Middle East. (I was living in the Middle East at the time that I wrote it.)

Tomorrow, I would like to share an Islamic angel story with a very interesting twist. I hope you will return here to read it.

In the meanwhile, Lizzie now collects angel memorabilia - dolls, pins, cards, you name it!

Fishes and Loaves for Colombia

Almost two years ago, I met a young priest from Colombia, Padre (Fr.) Julio. Padre Julio substituted for our noon Spanish mass one Sunday and mesmerized the congregation. Shortly thereafter I came to know Padre better (1) as he traveled more than an hour to Stanford University Hospital to pray for my daughter Noelle who was having brain surgery, (2) after he accepted my offer as a volunteer tutor of English when his duties were changed from the Spanish mass to the English mass (a mutually beneficial activity -- as I helped him convert his homilies from Spanish to English, I learned a lot of theology from him and a little more Spanish, too), and (3) during web design working sessions with my family (which consists of graphic artists, computer programmers, web designers, and me, a writer and translator) as we constructed a website for the organization that he founded: Por Amor a los Ninos de Colombia (for love of the children of Colombia). Padre's dream was to help the children of his native Colombia, a beautiful, rural region, full of potential that was being replaced by violence. Padre describes the situation as follows:

In recent years, violence and illiteracy have affected the communities of the village of Palomar and surrounding hamlets. The distance between the school and the houses where the children live can be between one and six hours, making school attendance impossible.

Because their families live in poverty, these children cannot afford transport to nearby towns or cities either. This has resulted in young people between the ages of 12 and 18 having no other choice than to join guerrilla or paramilitary groups, commit petty crimes, work in the fields without the possibility of an education, or worse yet, becoming addicted to drugs.

The need to provide alternatives to solve the many problems this school-age population is facing is an urgent one. They have neither the economic nor the material means to do it themselves.

But let me step back just a bit in time. When I first became acquainted with Padre as a result of his describing Por Amor during mass, I wanted to donate a little something -- and "little" was the right label for any monetary amount I could hope to scrape together. Having come from an impoverished farm family and then spending most of a lifetime raising children with serious medical needs, even spare change was hard to find. I reasoned, however, that I could offer family skill in lieu of money, and Padre and I began a conversation about how the website would look. In the midst of this conversation, I ended up being sent to work in Bahrain for three weeks, just as Padre was beginning a push to raise the initial funds for Por Amor. Padre and I maintained a running e-mail conversation, he in Spanish and I in English, about the website plans, but somewhere in the back of my mind was the understanding that most of our work would be in vain if he could not get together a reasonable fund in a reasonable amount of time. I would have liked to help with that, too, but I am no fundraiser. So, on both counts -- giving money and raising money -- I was not much help to Padre until a marvelous thing happened.

As soon as I had arrived in Bahrain, a friend, who knew I was coming, showed up in my hotel room and dragged me to dinner, in good Arab fashion refusing to allow me to pay. But I had per diem for my meals, one thousand dollars, in fact, to cover the time I would be abroad. As I walked up to my room, an idea flew into my mind (from where?). There would certainly be another friend or two who would react in the same way over the next three weeks and the Ministry of Education would also likely host me for at least one meal, so I might have a hundred or even a little more than a hundred dollars left over from unspent per diem. I made a promise to God that whatever amount I did not spend on food in Bahrain, I would give to Padre for His children in Colombia. After that, friends and colleagues appeared out of the woodwork, and none would allow me to pay my own way (it does not fit with the culture there). In addition, the Ministry of Education had several socials and formal dinners which were also free to me. When I left Bahrain at the end of the three weeks, I had not had to purchase even one meal. When I reached the USA, I handed all $1000 of my per diem over to Padre for his children.

Bahrain might be little more than a desert to some, but it does have the famous tree of life that flourishes in sand. How symbolic for what had just happened! I was living in a philanthropic desert and yet out of that wasteland tumbled one thousand dollars for children in need half a world away. Would God re-create the fishes and loaves miracle today? You bet!

Monday Morning Meditation #3: Legacies from the Tower of Babel

I have made it as far as Genesis, Chapter 11 (yep, I decided to continue in a sequential fashion, which is very unlike random me) before coming across the story of the Tower of Babel. I had to stop and reflect on that story because had there been no destruction of the tower and scattering of the people, along with confusion of tongues, I would have no employment today. You see, I have worked in 24 (about to be 25) countries as an interpreter, translator, foreign-language teacher, cross-cultural consultant, and language-program administrator. My repertoire of foreign languages exceeds 20 and continues to grow. So, of course, the story of the Tower of Babel caught my attention. Post-Babel, in the world in which we live and the one where I try to bridge cultures, our biggest problem internationally is understanding each other well enough to stop killing each other, or, better, not to start the killing to begin with.

Reading: Genesis 11:1-9

Meditation: In re-reading this passage, I noticed something beyond the outcome, i.e. the scattering of people across the world and the rise of a myriad languages. Something else speaks out from these verses: hubris. One hears overweaning pride and conceit in the words of the people: "Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, with its top in heaven, and let us make us a name." God's response was to prevent this, scattering the people, and making it difficult for them to communicate with each other. It would seem that "making a name" for oneself is not what God considers important, yet how often do we want to do just that? How often do we want our children to do that? How often do we admire those who have done that? How often do we congratulate friends whose offspring have done that? Making a name, it would seem, is very important in American culture.

One of the people I would like to emulate is our former landlord, Ernie Camacho. Anyone who knows baseball probably recognizes that name from World Series XIV, which he pitched, as well as his former pitching for more than one national baseball team. Ernie was a small-city boy, the son of immigrants (friends of ours), who had made a name for himself. The question is: Does anyone know where Ernie is now? He finished his career in the early '90s and returned to the town of his youth, living with his Mexican-Catholic parents (our friends), and working as a high school school janitor. Yes, as a janitor. Why? He started out as a school counselor, but took on the janitor's job because, as he told me, the students opened up more to a janitor than to a counselor; they had nothing to fear or prove with a janitor. As an international educator, I have a long way to go to reach the level of janitor. Maybe I won't make it, but I try. I have come to know many janitors worldwide; they have been good teachers for me. Some day maybe I will be as good a teacher as they. For that, I pray. I suppose I could quit my job and seek one as a janitor, but (1) I am not ready for that because I like what I do and I know that God is able to use us wherever we are (it is, in fact, a job that God has permitted after obviously closing doors to alternatives) and (2) I am not good enough at the skills required of janitors for anyone to consider offering me a job.

And that is far as I can go with you on this Monday morning. I must retire to prayer to ask God for guidance as I continue to try to be an adequate conduit for Him and for my organization in bridging cultural and linguistic differences, to express my regret for each of those instances where I "blew it" because I was not ready to understand "the other" or failed to do my homework in advance of meetings, to give thanks for a lifetime of unexpected and undeserved opportunities to meet representatives of the scattered tribes descending from the days of Babel, and to offer praise to God who understands us even without words. Yes, that is what I will pray for to begin with, but then, I will take up the more important theme, to ask God to show me how to be His janitor, to sweep any sense of my own self-importance under the carpet of fraternal love, and to trash any pride that may remain hidden within me for I do not need it. The latter is, unfortunately, not a one-time prayer. I need to have long, periodic conversations with God about that -- and do.

After that, I will spend some time in contemplation with this wonderful God who loves me in spite of my pride and failures.

I will now leave you to your prayer and contemplation.

If you pick this up as a weekly devotional activity, please share with me and others your own thoughts about the message of Genesis 11: 1-9.

Have a good day and a good week!